Grandparents get up to date! - by Maureen Mann

This term I have been teaching a course on modern children’s literature (especially Australian), at the Launceston School for Seniors. It’s been extremely successful and I have decided to repeat it next year, though the content will change. The students are all enthusiastic readers but, until recently, haven’t read any of the wonderful books available at the moment. We really do have a fantastic selection of titles published around the world for young people of all ages.

The course has been planned to introduce the participants to a wide range of recent publications. Some of the activities have included looking at past books entered in the CBCA Awards, visiting a bookshop, reading new-to-student titles from the library and over the last 3 weeks browsing through some of the 2012 entries lent to us by Tasmania’s current Book of the Year judge. These last few weeks has given each of us the chance to read the most current books. Here are some of the picture books (which I have enjoyed) from the entries so far.

The Gift by Penny Matthews and Martin McKenna.

The small, plain brown bear sits in a toy shop, surrounded by special Christmas toys. One by one the other toys are bought but bear remains until late Christmas Eve when a small child falls in love with him. McKenna’s digitally created illustrations use a lot of white space and show the bear with all his emotions. It’s a wonderful heart-tugging book, and will especially appeal to those who collect Christmas stories.

Alex and the Watermelon Boat by Chris McKimmie

This story grew from McKimmie’s experiences during the 2011 floods in Brisbane. Alex has to go outside, though forbidden to, when his favourite stuffed toy hopped out the window. Using his watermelon boat to search, he sees the calamities of the flood. McKimmie’s easily recognisable illustrative style uses a wide range of techniques and materials which he lists at the back of the book. I love it.

The Terrible Suitcase by Emma Allen and Freya Blackwood

The young girl is so mad not to receive her requested bright red backpack as her first school bag. Instead it was a terrible suitcase but the narrator discovers that her bag has many adaptations that she didn’t expect, leading to a wide range of adventures. A multi-layered story.

Show Day by Penny Matthews and Andrew McLean

Matthews and McLean have again collaborated to produce a great book, appropriate for any part of Australia where agricultural shows are held. Many child readers will resonate with the story.

Bush Bash by Sally Morgan and Ambellin Kwaymullina

This is a counting book, combined with a song-like refrain and an I-spy element, using Australian animals. Kwaymullina’s brightly coloured illustrations reflect her Aboriginal heritage.

Pooka by Carol Chataway and Nin Rycroft

The family loves the stray dog that turned up on their doorstep, though Grandad keeps reminding everyone not to become attached. The narrator becomes depressed when Pooka’s owner collects her but bounces back when Pooka and her pups visit. Great use of white space and vibrant illustrations.

The Queen With the Wobbly Bottom by Philip Gwynne and Bruce Whatley

The queen doesn’t like her wobbly bottom and unsuccessfully offers rewards to change it. The poet comes along and teaches her that she is loved. A fun story which shows that praise can go a long way. It’s a great example of verbal and visual texts complementing each other. Whatley’s illustrations are not what we might expect.

Tom the Outback Mailman by Kristin Weidenbach and Timothy Ide

This is a fictionalised account of Tom Kruse, mailman along the Birdsville track from 1936 to 1963. A great way of showing city kids what life along the Track can be like. Lots of scope for further investigations.

Owl Know How by Cat Rabbit and Isobel Knowles

Cloud Town has begun to sink into the branches of a tree, so the friends make a machine to produce owls who life the town back up into the air. This book will be a great addition to school libraries with its illustrations created from 3-dimensional felt, cardboard and recycled materials.

Good Night Sleep Tight by Mem Fox and Judy Horacek

Skinny Doug is babysitting Bonnie and Ben who do all in their power not to have to go to sleep. Fox has combined her signature repetitive refrain with traditional nursery rhymes to create an excellent bedtime book.

The Books We Took On Holiday - by Rachele Carnevale

On the train to Osaka!

In March this year our little family embarked on a three month trip of Japan and Europe.  Although we needed to pack as lightly as possible it was essential that we included a selection of picture books for our 16 month old son, Roman.  The prerequisites were that the books be light (therefore paperback) they must be tried and tested favourites (we had no room for duds) and there must be a couple of specific goodnight ones.

We put all of the possibilities on the floor, came up with a long list and then whittled it down to about ten titles.  These included golden oldies such as The Tiger Who Came to Tea, Meg and Mog, Harry the Dirty Dog, Hop on Pop, Hairy Maclary and Zachary Quack and Mister Magnolia - as well as more recent titles such as Penguin by Polly Dunbar, When the World is Ready for Bed by Gillian Shields and Maisy's Bedtime.

We also purchased an iPad for our travels on which we carried our Lonely Planet guides, a few e-books for Roman (Green Eggs and Ham and Moo by Matthew Van Fleet) and some animated adaptations of the Hairy Maclary and Maisy stories.

Osaka Ryokan

The decision to take physical books, despite the additional weight to our luggage was one of the best decisions we made.  Although we sometimes got quite bored with the small selection, we always managed to keep up our regular bedtime story time routine - no matter where we were.  We had stories while on long flights, train trips, ferry voyages and in tiny hotel rooms.  This regular routine not only comforted Roman and helped him go to sleep every night in the ever changing locations, but gave us a feeling of normalcy too.

The iPad was used in different situations, when Roman would get bored or grizzly on long trips by plane, train, bus or ferry.  However, rather than the e-books he much preferred watching the animations of familiar stories and the couple of episodes of Playschool we had put on the iPad.  We were so grateful to Maisy and Hairy Maclary on some of these trips.

Shinkansen to Kyoto

We had a couple of interesting book experiences on trains - one in Finland and one in Japan.  While travelling from snowy Helsinki to snowier Tampere in Finland, we were booked onto a carriage specially designed for families with small children.  This is the best idea ever! Not only were there lots of small kids, a mini train in the carriage for them to play on and a slide, but a whole bookshelf full of picture books too!  Despite the books being in the Finnish language, we had a lovely time looking at all of the pictures and making up the stories.  It was such a novelty for us to be looking at new books rather than our own scruffy selection. 

While travelling on a local train in Osaka in March, Roman, tired and grumpy (having been on the rails for hours since leaving Nagasaki), was in urgent need of entertainment.  Luckily, I had had the foresight to pack a couple of books in our bag and whipped out The Tiger Who Came to Tea.  It worked like magic!  As I was reading it to him I noticed that he wasn’t my only audience - the other passengers on the train were also listening.  I felt like a twit but tried to focus on Roman. Afterwards, a smartly dressed Japanese businessman came and chatted to us.  He said that he and his family had lived in Scotland a number of years ago and that he had read the same book to his children and they had loved it too.  It was such a lovely connection to have made.

As we travelled we picked up some more books to spice up our story time collection and weigh down our luggage.  We found a good English language selection of children's books in the Japanese bookstore Kinokuniya.  We bought some Curious George and Clifford titles there, amongst others.  We also bought books in other languages, including Japanese, Finnish, French and Italian.  Luckily, we already knew many of these stories word for word, such as Goodnight Moon (or Bonsoir Lune in French), otherwise we just made the stories up!  We always left the price stickers on the backs of the books we purchased overseas so we will always remember where we bought them.

Coming home to Roman's book collection was so exciting, there were so many choices, it felt like such a treat, and then visiting the library again and borrowing more was fantastic.  We were in book heaven after having such a small selection for such a long time. We still read our well travelled treasures regularly and they always remind us of the fun we had reading them on Roman’s great big overseas holiday.

Open Spaces spark wondrous Imaginings! by Christina Booth

Bruce Whatley

Australian Society of Authors Open Spaces Retreat for Picture Book Creators, Sydney, 2012.

When we think of a retreat the word quiet springs to mind: personal, solitary time to work, reflect and consolidate. You might even have time to be guided by another, take long strolls to clear and sort your mind.

So what happens when a group of picture book creators meet in Sydney for a retreat? Plenty, but a lot of what we traditionally consider retreat essentials are reinvented and not a lot of quiet is had!

Picture book authors and illustrators (not unlike most authors and artisans) are cave dwelling creatures that work mostly in isolation and solitude. The ticking deadlines are our constant companions and the niggling domestic routine often oversteps its boundaries into the creative caves we have established, so when a retreat for picture book creators is offered then we must expect the unexpected, rules to be broken or adapted and noise and mess to be created.

What a treat. The ASA (Australian society of Author) invited us to move into the wonderful Hughenden Hotel in Woollahra, Sydney (near Paddington) to join them for a four day retreat of treats and experiences we could never achieve by ourselves.

We started on Thursday at lunch time. We were an awkward gathering of some strangers and old friends rabbiting around portfolios and samples and making small talk, nervously wondering what the next few days would bring and how much of our creative souls we were going to have to share. 

Twelve of us poured over the work of others, ‘oohing’ and ‘ahhing’, recognising pieces from books old and new and putting faces to the names of those who have them on covers.

We began the sessions by introducing ourselves, our work and what we wanted to achieve from the weekend. What inspiration and wonder, it was hard not to feel a bit overwhelmed by the talent before us.

Then the work began. Hard work? We were thrown into the creative pit of art supplies, provided by Micador and told to PLAY! All afternoon, with someone sitting beside us to talk to, and talk we did. We drew with textas, crayons, painted, rubbed and coloured and experimented with goodies we had only admired on the art shop shelves, what joy.

After a quick freshen up and the removal of crayon from under fingernails we braved the heat (it was over thirty degrees for this Tasmanian who had left Tassie trembling in her jumper and coat) and we headed to the piano lounge for a gathering of Sydney ASA members and guests for pre-dinner nibbles drinks and a book launch. How spoilt was I? Part of the program was the launch of my new book with Amanda Niland, ‘I Wish There Were Dinosaurs.’ The launch was wonderful, the honours done by the talented Libby Gleeson. Very apt as she has been a great encourager on my journey as an author and had also tutored Amanda.

Off for a lovely dinner followed by guest speaker Tohby Riddle who shared the process and journey of creating his book ‘Unforgotten.’ The only negative was a visit from a very large huntsman who decided to walk across the wall behind Tohby during the talk making it hard for those of us arachnophobes in the audience to look up at the power point presentation).

Friday was an early start. Early breakfast (6.30 am)put on by the hotel to accommodate our busy schedule and then we were off to catch a bus. Laurine acted as Miss Clavel and had us all safely travelling to Bondi to walk the shoreline and experience the Sculptures by the Sea exhibition. We went early to avoid the crowds which were shoulder to shoulder by midday. We now understood the early start. For someone unfamiliar with most parts of Sydney I felt like a wild schoolgirl let off her leash. What beautiful beaches and scenery (including one or two life guards) and amazing sculptures, something I recommend you all to see.

Fish and chips by the beach then a bus trip back to the hotel ready for a drawing lesson from Bruce Whatley (or should I say Dr. Bruce). Bruce studied the effects of right brained drawing for his PHD and we were treated to a session of drawing with our other hand. Seeing as not all retreaters were illustrators this threw up a decent challenge but fun was had by all and much was learned about how much better our wobbly hands are compared to our preferred hand. If fun is measured by mess then the fact that a lot of us looked like chimney sweeps by the end was a good indication of a great afternoon.

Collaboration times were scheduled throughout the progam and they went from quiet, reserved discussions and the nervous handing over of ideas and manuscripts to a full group show and tell session by the end of the weekend. As we grew to know and trust each other with our ‘babies’ we entered into great discussions of hope and potential for our work. Brainstorming characters, solving lumps and bumps in texts and generally encouraging each other in our journeys we solved niggling problems, started our new story ideas and boosted each other’s creativity. Whilst every activity we did was wonderful, this aspect of the weekend was perhaps the most rewarding.

Saturday saw a few of us up early for a stroll to the Paddington markets. Then back to the hotel to catch a ferry of taxi’s to visit the Brett Whitely studio. Palpitations. He might not be everyone’s cup of tea but he’s one of my favourite artists and it was almost too surreal to find myself viewing an exhibition of his works in his personal space, sitting and watching a DVD about his life and work in his sitting room and reading his rants, raves and quotes scribbled in-between magazine cuttings and personal photos adorning his studio walls. When I first heard we were going, I turned very Victorian and felt quite faint. (I am still curious as to whether the set of false teeth adhered to his painting belong to the owner of the brain, also attached to the same painting).

Another taxi ride to Kirribilli Park overlooking the harbour for a gourmet picnic lunch (Miss Clavel still had us safely together) and a time to explore the wonderful rescue work of Wendy Whitely. The gardens are spectacular and are full of wonderful birdlife and curiosities, all created out of an old railway yard that was/is disused. Wendy is preparing for the inevitable battle that they will one day want it back but it has become a favourite place for Sydneysiders to enjoy, relax in and as happened on the day we visited, get married in. Wendy was there, busy working with her volunteers and stopped to chat with us as we ate lunch. Some more collaboration work in the dappled shade at the bottom of the garden and then a walk to the ferry for a ride from Luna Park to the Circular Quay added to our journey.

We then caught a bus home to the hotel and a revisit of the markets before a very special visit to the second Dr Seuss Gallery in the world. We were surrounded by the very wonderful and colourful world of Dr Seuss prints and were all tempted to make a purchase but alas, they were a little out of our reach. 

We can dream however.

Back to the hotel, freshened up and in our colourful gear we headed back to the piano bar for Tapas, Spanish spiced wine and our last night of sharing and collaboration. We were treated (again, as she played for us on Friday also) to the beautiful violin renditions of Fiona Stewart (illustrator of Sally Odger’s Bush Lullaby), such a talented lady, professional musician, sculptor and illustrator extraordinaire. We were also joined by the passionate and lovely Susanne Gervay (hotel owner and author) for a number of the get-togethers.

Sadly, such gatherings must come to an end and after packing and a last collaboration time over breakfast on Sunday, we said our farewells and headed home.

Quiet we were not, in solitude we did not find ourselves but filled to the brim, inspired, motivated, engaged and raring to go we are.

Thanks to the ASA, especially Miss Clavel (Laurine Croasdale) and to Ann James for organising a most memorable and fantastic four days. Something that will help light up our lonely little caves and keep us inspired.

Strangers no more.

Until next year....

Christina at her book launch

Storytime at the Supermarket!

I have this morning presented the final Storytime at the Supermarket at Kingston, in the south of the state – a charming nearly-five-year-old and I read Kip by Christine Booth, I’m the best by Lucy Cousins, and a Big Book version of The little red hen. We enjoyed cock-a-doodle-doodling with gusto in all the right places; we noted that dogs who think they are the best can hurt their friends’ feelings; and we discussed where the Big Book version I had was not as good as our favourite versions of The little red hen.

One child wasn’t a very big audience, but it was enjoyable to share these stories while his mother and a friend looked on. Here in the south our audiences have been wildly variable in size, but there’s always been someone. I understand that experience in the north (at Prospect Plaza) has been much the same. We have been fortunate to have the support of the Kingborough Council at Kingston – Melissa has sent out digital copies of our flyers each month, and posted an A3 version in a few places. And we have been able to share a children’s activity space provided by the Council.

Storytime at the Supermarket was the brainchild of CBCA (Tas.) Inc. committee members in Launceston, to mark the National Year of Reading, and it has been successful in raising community awareness of CBCA activities. It’s taken time, of course, preparing a flyer to promote each session (on the first Monday of each month since March 2012), preparing a running sheet with lists of books chosen to illustrate a theme, songs and rhymes each month, and fronting up at the venue each session.

But all volunteers have enjoyed the process, and now the big question is, will we do it again next year? Melissa did ask me this morning, as I said good bye, if we planned to be available in the New Year. I had to say I wasn’t sure, but she knows how to get in touch if she needs some stories read!

Imagination is alive and well - by Penny Garnsworthy

Recently I was approached to judge a short story competition for one of the region's festivals. 

As part of this competition, grade 5 and 6 students at two local schools were asked to write, and illustrate, what they thought the region would 'look' like in 20 years' time. How hard could it be, I thought to myself as I enthusiastically said yes to the suggestion. Within a few weeks I was presented with a huge pile of entries. And what I quickly came to realise was that when the competition was announced, no parameters had been set ... for anything.

One of the teachers had been kind enough to shortlist entries for their class which should have made choosing a winner, and runners-up quite easy. But because there were no parameters, one story comprised two paragraphs, another two pages. That was fine, and I simply ignored my usually strong desire to correct grammar and spelling, and read the stories as entertainment.

Another teacher hadn't shortlisted at all so I waded through those entries only to discover that half the entries were about the requested topic, and half were about entirely unrelated topics. However, as I had for the first group, I finally chose a winner and runners-up.

Then I received another surprise. Unbeknown to the organisers (and me too of course) a number of younger children had decided to participate in the competition. These were grade 1 students who illustrated their ideas in a range of formats and the spread them across anywhere from two to eight pages! Some of them had even added text and their teacher had kindly translated any words this poor judge may not undertstand.

Reading the stories was certainly a challenge, but also a delight and I had great fun! And there was one thing all the entries had in common. Imagination.

In 20 years' time, according to the entries, adults will have flying cars, kids will ride hoverboards to school, every person will have a personal robot, mobile phones will be holograms and trips to the moon will be commonplace (some on flying horses).

iPods and iPads will be the norm in every classroom and ... there won't be any books in school. Scary thought, isn't it?

Confessions of a Bookophile - Carol Fuller

I have loved books since I can’t remember. Suffice is to say that I still remember the Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer book I was tearfully forced to leave behind in England as a small child when my family immigrated to Tasmania. A book read is a book to be owned, held onto, caressed and kept on display on a shelf, hence my small Victorian cottage is bulging at the seams with just about every book I have ever read.

But recently I have begun to question my obsession. After receiving over 800 books during the two years I was CBCA reading judge, and also being in two adult reading groups, involving therefore two books every month, plus the extra ten the focus books lead me onto, I really have had to rationalize not only the storage space but also, since retirement, the cost of this mania.

Firstly I have begun to use the library more. Next, secondhand bookshops have become the first port of call when looking for a particular book. Then finally if this fails and friends also can’t help, I will indulge myself and buy. The problem with the library is that for some reason the very book I want to borrow is NOT located at Launceston LINC, or everyone else in Launceston needs the same book and I have to wait at least three months before my turn comes. There is usually a date associated with my book group reading so timing really is important.

Last year I was travelling through Europe and when planning to be away for two months I knew I would need at least ten books to while away the long flights and rest times on the trip. The majority of my travelling was to be through foreign countries where finding books in English might prove time consuming. So here was another bookish problem. How could I possibly pack this number of books; sufficient clothes and shoes; allow for the odd purchase along the way and still come in under the thirty two kilo weight restriction imposed by airline companies?

Being a self confessed bookophile who just loves to hold a book in my hands, or admire them lined up on the wall to wall bookshelves in my study, I now have to confess that my thoughts and book acquisition habits are changing. I bought an ipad!!! This solved the travelling problem. At the touch of a button I downloaded all the books I wanted to read on my travels. Amazingly I realized that I could solve the library waiting list as well. This of course doesn’t eliminate the costs of reading but in many cases I can buy the book I want on line for less. I must confess this makes me feel very disloyal to my bookseller friends and I haven’t come to terms with that aspect of my new bookishness yet although the ipad option has not diminished that feeling that I must buy a book when I walk into a book store and that mysterious need still has me impulse buying ‘the real thing’.

And on the subject of a device not being conducive to reading in bed; I find the ipad much easier and lighter to hold in the prone position, especially with very long tomes.

After all this change of attitude, there was one book domain that I could not see altering for me and that was picture books. I am a very doting Grandmother of a child who just loves books and who has inherited all the beautiful books from my judging years plus more. His favourite book is ‘The Very Cranky Bear,’ by Nick Bland. In our eyes nothing could replace the hard copy held between us as we read for the hundredth time about ‘the jingle, jangle jungle on a cold and rainy day’. But wait, there’s more.

At the CBCA conference earlier this year, a colleague from my judging days asked had I seen the new ‘Very Cranky Bear’ app. Well two minutes later I was hooked. Our treasured book in all its exact pictorial and verbal splendour, on my ipad with even more exciting embellishments, like having it read to the pre-independent reader by someone other than grandma, Mum or Dad; music to enhance the mood, characters that move and shake to suit the situation, cards to collect for a surprise activity at the end and a microphone option that allows the small reader to read and record the story in his/her own voice. (He knows it off by heart but also knows which words go with which pages; good start to becoming an independent reader.)

Well that was a major change of attitude! Yes, there can be an electronic version of a picture book as equally appealing as ‘the real thing’, but I must say I prefer that the hard and electronic copy be used in tandem much like I would advise a teenager to read ‘The Hunger Games’ before seeing the film. Consequently the grandson now has ‘The Very Ichy Bear’, The Very Hungry Bear’ and ‘The Wrong Book’, (all by Nick Bland) in both hard and electronic versions.

I still haven’t reached the stage of believing that electronic books will fully replace hard copy books and I will continue to gaze at my bookshelves with love and satisfaction, but I am also beginning to appreciate the new dimension of pleasurable reading that technology affords us.

World of Chickens - by Maureen Mann

While reading Penny’s editorial in the last newsletter about building her chook run, I thought it would be good to focus on some books about chickens. There are lots to choose from, so of course I am only going to include a selection.

Peggy by Anna Walker (2012)

I love this story and have done since my first reading. Peggy is blown away from home by a big gust of wind and finds herself on an adventure in the big city but also wants to find her way home.

Shutting the chooks in by Libby Gleeson and Ann James (2003)

The story of the trip, through the farmyard as it gradually becomes dark, to shut the chooks in for the night. Wonderful illustrations.

Chicken Licken (various editions)

This is an old favourite, also known as Henny Penny or Chicken Little. It’s a moral tale about a chicken who believes in the disaster that the sky is about to fall in.

Bear and Chook by Lisa Shanahan and Emma Quay (2002)

The lovely story of the friendship between Bear and Chook: the supportive things that friends do for each other.

Queenie the Bantam by Bob Graham (1997)

Created in Bob Graham’s cartoon style, this tells the story how Queenie is rescued from a lake by Caitlyn and her family, how Queenie is absorbed into the family life but is eventually returned to the farm.

Hattie and the fox by Mem Fox and Patricia Mullins (1986)

A hen sees a nose in the bushes but all the other animals aren’t interested. This book is a good example of Mem Fox’s signature use of repetition.

Mr Chicken goes to Paris by Leigh Hobbs (2009)

Leigh Hobbs’ quirky vision of Mr Chicken visiting all the wonderful sights of Paris, when in fact he himself is one of the main attractions.

Rosie’s Walk by Pat Hutchins (first published 1971)

Rosie sets out on her walk, unaware of the fox following her and hoping to eat her for his dinner. She unintentionally takes him on an obstacle course before she returns home safely.

I wonder if your favourite is included here. Please tell us all about it if it’s not.

"Not so different from Harry" - Lyndon reviews A Casual Vacancy

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE CASUAL VACANCY

What Fats wanted to recover was a kind of innocence, and the route he had chosen back to it was through all the things that were supposed to be bad for you, but which, paradoxically, seemed to Fats to be the one true way to authenticity; a kind of purity. It was curious how often everything was back to front, the inverse of what they told you; Fats was starting to think that if you flipped every bit of received wisdom on its head you would have the truth.

J.K. Rowling was right when she said in her Australian interview with Jennifer Byrne that she had promised us seven Harry Potter books, and she didn’t owe her readers anything. She might be wrong, however, if she thinks that what she writes after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will not be read through cracked and sticky-taped Harry Potter lenses, and that the now-adult readers of her original series can ever hope to conquer the insatiable desire to search for traces of the childhood friend they’ve now lost in everything that bears her name. Hogwarts casts a long shadow.

Rowling has certainly tried with The Casual Vacancy however, to make sure this quest is soon proven fruitless. There is no touch of Harry here, as all the wide-eyed wonder of her children’s series is quickly abandoned for bleak and bitter realism. Those who, like myself, had come to read the heavily guarded details of the novel’s release as an indication of a kind of an Agatha Christie or Downton Abbey-eqsue idyllic cottage drama, will soon see that there is more bubbling under the surface than simple political competition in Pagford. In fact, there’s everything; my friends Bill and Isobel have contrived a game - what crime doesn’t occur in The Casual Vacancy? (Hint: There aren’t many. Yes, probably not even that one.)

There is swearing too; lots of it. By page fifteen I had to put it down for a moment and take a breather. Was this really J.K. Rowling? It took a good while for me to de-tune my interior monologue, which was always calling back to Potter and trying to reconcile the two versions of Rowling as a writer. In the end trying to tie my portrait of Rowling together was fruitless - as hard as it might be, the only way to fully get to The Casual Vacancy is to push it away from Potter.

Once you grapple with the world that you’ve entered - so much more like our own, so much less like Rowling’s other England - after a gradual warm-up The Casual Vacancy is an incredible novel. Dark and tragic, by the three quarter mark it grips with the hardened intensity and oblivious midnight page-turning that only Rowling can. It’s the kind of book that could, and perhaps should, win awards bigger than the Smarties prize. There will be an inevitable backlash from people who were hoping for a more gentle novel of course, and expect many abandoned copies to show up in second-hand bins and opportunity shops, as popular readers realise that they were tricked into buying a literary text, but I think that what Rowling has done here is more important than pleasing her old fans - she’s proved that there’s an extremely serious heart beating beneath the smoke and mirrors of the Potter series. Some of us have been arguing it for years, but The Casual Vacancy proves it: Rowling is a serious writer. I’d like to see some of her contemporary hit-machines, like E.L. James (who recently outsold Potter with her Fifty Shades series), write a novel as intellectually engaging as this.

My biggest fear about The Casual Vacancy though, is that it will be hard to keep it out of the hands of kids. As a 22 year-old I can rightly insist upon reading it, having (arguably) grown up from my own Harry odyssey, but it’s difficult to imagine that a 12 year-old version of me that had just finished The Deathly Hallows wouldn’t attempt the same. School libraries, I hope, will be wise enough not to purchase it for their shelves, and parents are encouraged to be vigilant: The Casual Vacancy has lashings of sex, drugs, domestic violence and hip-hop. There is an ugly side to this sleepy village.

For mum and dad though, I think Rowling’s done it again. She’s a writer at the top of her game, and once the initial shock wears off, she’s proven she can make that adult leap that many British children’s writers - A. A. Milne and Roald Dahl as two examples - haven’t successfully been able to. This is not a novel that everyone will latch on to, but for those who do love it, it will be an all-encompassing love; the novel defines and explores the problems of an entire generation. For some, The Casual Vacancy will ring a truly resounding note, and hold a special place in their shelves and hearts. 

In that respect, perhaps it’s not so different from Harry, after all.